Your EDM Exclusive Interview: Astronaut

Hailing from the UK, these two guys make up one of the fastest growing duos of the year — Astronaut. We recently got a chance to catch up with Ross and Dan from Astronaut and talked about everything from their favorite music outside the studio, to their dream collabs.

In July of 2013, Astronaut released their first installment to their audio-visual project via Disciple Recordings. Shorty after, however, Monstercat decided to re-release the single along with amazing remixes by DKS, SLDGHMR, Dodge & Fuski, The Brig, and BarleyAlive. In January of this year, Astronaut released their second installment to the series with the QuantumEP. As of now, the music videos for Apollo and Quantum have already raked in upwards of 650k views on youtube, and now, the duo is releasing yet another addition to the epic series with “Champions.”

Check out the interview below:

A little over a month ago, you guys hit 30k Facebook likes, and you’ve already gained 3k more fans since then. How does it feel to hit such an awesome milestone after just one year?

It feels great! It’s pretty crazy to look back at how much we’ve grown since the
release of our ‘Apollo EP’. We love to make music and it’s a great feeling to know that so many people enjoy what we make! We’re super excited to enter into our second year as a duo.

You’ve stayed true to your out-of-this-world-theme pretty much since your first release, which is really awesome! But I have to ask: have you ever thought about experimenting with a different style but never really got to it? Maybe you felt like your fans wouldn’t appreciate the change or otherwise felt restricted in some way?

We experiment with different styles all the time but electro seems to be what
comes naturally to us. The first Astronaut track we made together was actually Drum and Bass (we never released it!) and we just uploaded a Dubstep track called ‘Earthsphere’ to UKF Dubstep that you can get as a free download from our Facebook page as well.

Even though you’ve stayed true to a general theme when it came to your music, you’ve bounced around between electro, dubstep, drum & bass, and even glitch hop, so I’d say you’ve done quite a bit of experimenting. The question is, however, which genre do you enjoy producing the most?

Electro house seems to be what comes the most naturally to us and its definitely what we have the most fun making!

Your animated music video series has been quite popular with Quantum and Apollo collectively raking in upwards of 650 thousand views on YouTube, and now you’re releasing yet another soon-to-be electro sensation with your newest single “Champions.” Where did the idea of an animated music video series come from?

It was just an idea we had right at the beginning…. We’ve always been fans of
anime and animation movies in general so we’re so excited to have the great Alexander Lehmann on the team behind the movie now too!

Quantum and Apollo were both great mixes between some electro and progressive vibes – delivering great progressive melodic vibes with a nice electro punch, and now with “Champions,” you guys took an even more uplifting and melodic route. Where would you say you draw the most inspiration?

We listen to as many different styles of music that we can and draw out what’s
good about the tracks instead of focusing on what we don’t like. We listen to a lot of pop music, 90’s trance, UK garage and of course, EDM! We’re so privileged to have gained some awesome friends through music that we still look up to and take influence from like Far Too Loud and Lets Be Friends! Really great guys…

Your newest single, “Champions,” features vocals by the incredibly talented Harry Brooks JNR. What is it like working with such a talented vocalist? How did the creative process work?

Harry is great in the studio and an extremely talented writer and singer – We’re
very lucky to have him on some of our tracks. After he sang on ‘Apollo’ we started to throw around ideas with a few other tunes that we had wrote and one of those was ‘Champions’. Then, he came to the studio and we got the whole vocal recorded in an afternoon.

What is it like being a part of the Monstercat family now?

Monstercat is an amazing label with a really forward thinking team too. It’s great being a part of the family and working with those guys!

One dream collab. Who would it be, and why?

Noisia, because Noisia.

What types of music do you find yourselves listening to the most?

Ross: When we’re not in the studio I like to listen to a lot of music that I grew up on like Linkin Park and A Day To Remember because it’s the complete opposite to what we make. Its good to come back to producing dance music with a clear head!

Dan:I listen to loads of new music all the time…i like searching out new stuff on
soundcloud/hype machine – recently been listening alot to a duo called Broods.

If there was one thing you could change about the EDM scene, what would it be and why?

I think it’s important as producers that we keep pushing boundaries and taking risks – the focus needs to be on making great music, not following trends…but it’s equally important as listeners not to simply dislike something because it’s different or a certain genre. Deciding to hate something simply because of the bpm is silly and unfortunately we see a lot of that.

What do you guys have in store for us in the future? Any collabs? Any experiments you’re particularly excited about that you can share with us at the moment?

We’ve been working on some tracks with The Mcmash Clan and Diamond eyes but we’re also really excited about a track that we’re making with Far To Loud.